Thursday, July 30, 2015

So I’m getting ready to go to Michigan,
the fortieth and the last Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. I haven’t started packing yet, although I
leave the day after tomorrow.

I remember my first Michfest, twenty-seven
years ago. It was 1988, and Marisol and
I had just gotten married that spring. It
took a long time to get in the gate, and the sun set before we found ourselves
on the land. We were tired and
dispirited as we walked along, carrying all our gear, peering into the shadows,
looking for a place to camp. Marisol was
the expert camper, I was a novice, so I was mostly holding the flashlight while
she struggled with the various tent pieces.

The next morning we thought it was
raining, but when we poked our heads outside the tent, we found we’d camped
right next to the showers. There were a
row of naked women laughing and squealing, since the water was icy cold. It was endlessly entertaining. We already felt better about being there. And later on, when we got in the water
ourselves, we experienced something akin to being inside a Sno-Cone.

Sometime between now and then, they
added heaters to the showers, and so women don’t necessarily sing out when they get into them. Michfest has changed, grown up. They used to have a special
over-40s area, and at some point, it became over-50s. Camping has gotten harder for me as I’ve
entered my 60s, and Marisol has completely given it up.

But I still go once in a while. When I’m there, I still give astrology
workshops, as I have since 1988. I soak
up the feeling of being in a woman’s village, a place where women are
absolutely safe from predators (except mosquitos). A place where women can get away from the male
ego, and its tendency to demand all the space and all the attention. A place where we support each other, listen
to each other, and give each other room to create. It’s not like all women are the same, but we
do have a culture of our own, and it’s hard to see this in the ordinary world,
where the harsher light of male culture drowns it out.

This is not to say that Michfest has
been a peaceful Eden all these years.
Women do differ, and there have been vehement disagreements over all
aspects of feminism, sexuality, gender, race, and cultural appropriation. Fierce
battles have been fought with words, with the ultimate goal a collective raised
consciousness. It’s an ongoing process,
sometimes as shocking as those cold-water showers, but many of these conflicts
have led to changes in the way the festival is organized.

In the last few years, Michfest has been
embroiled in the most virulent conflict of its life, from a group of MTF
transgender activists who say the festival discriminates against them. They initiated a boycott against Michfest and
the artists who performed there. The conflict may have begun as a desire to be
included, but ended up as a campaign to destroy.

I remember when S/M women felt that
there was no place for them at the festival, back in the day, and now there is
an area where they can play all night long.
There were signs that this same process of assimilation was happening
with trans women, but we’ll never know how it might have played out. Michfest is ending.

And from my point of view, there’s still
a terrible need for it in the world.
Lesbians are more assimilated than they were in 1988, but feminism
hasn’t progressed all that much since then. There is no other place where several thousand
women can live for a week without men. There is no other place where we can discover
who we are, and what kind of world can be created without patriarchy.

The aspects during the coming week show
a time of great jubilation, and a time of mourning and sadness, all at
once. Venus, Jupiter and Mercury will be
together in the bold, exuberant sign Leo, and this is perfect for getting up on
there on the stage and giving everything you have to give. It’s a wonderful planetary grouping for a
week-long celebration, in which every woman dresses in whatever gives her most joy. It’s great for group hugs and kisses, and
campsites festooned in banners and ribbons.

But all three planets are squaring Saturn,
the planet of limitation. Saturn is
about knowing when it’s time to give up, to let go. Saturn turns out the lights when the party is
over.

And so I expect to see a lot of laughter
and a lot of tears, during the coming week.
I’ll be going through my own emotional roller-coaster too, because
Michfest has given me so much. It’s not
heaven, but it’s a better world.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

June was a
runaway month, in more ways than one. And
I’ve run away to Oregon. As the waiter
at Zach’s Bistro said yesterday, I’ve swapped coasts. And now the ocean is on the wrong side, and
everything seems like the inverse of what it was before.

Yesterday I
was sticking my toes in the well-chilled waters of the Pacific, thinking about
how the US has undergone a sea-change in the last few weeks.

It began
with the horror of the AME chuch killings in Charleston. Like everyone else in the country, I lost
something precious when those good people were murdered. I was ready to bow out as a member of the
human race. Or maybe to pull a Rachel
Dolezal and stop being white. And to retire
as an astrologer, too, because I was expecting good things from the Jupiter/Uranus
trine.

But it just
brought home that there are really no good or bad aspects in astrology. The Jupiter/Uranus trine was a release of
held-back energy, and it manifested in a lot of ways. The murderer in the church was a pent-up mass
of old fear, guilt and prejudice, and he expressed all that. He was trying to start a race war, but instead
he shocked a lot of white people out of denial.
He represented a demonic undercurrent, a social shadow, and when he
brought this shadow out into the light, he forced people to recognize it. And so with the energy he unleashed, he destroyed
his own flag.

President
Obama, in his eloquent speech at Rev. Pinckney’s funeral, said that the murderer
was being used by God - to bring the
flag down, to make a deeper reconciliation out of all that grief. I can echo that, although I would say “fate”
instead of “God”. What the murderer set in motion was larger
than him, larger than the hate he carried.

Other kinds
of held-back energy were released as June ended. First,
Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court, and the result was a mass exhalation
of relief all across this land. Worried
people everywhere, people with low incomes and sick family members, could rest
a little easier.

Then came
the gay-marriage decision, followed by a cascade of joy in my community. Social media exploded with celebrations, not
just from my lesbian and gay friends, but from all our allies. For me
and my wife, this means we can live anywhere in the US, without forfeiting any
rights. We can fantasize about moving to
Florida when we get old, just like millions of creaky old straight
couples.

And of
course, the current doesn’t just stop with us, the gay and lesbian
community. Lots of anti-gay-marriage
people have been caught in the same vortex of energy, and are expressing it in
the opposite way: talking about
seceding, about getting divorces, about moving to other countries.

I read a
long, hilarious stream of comments from people complaining that the Supreme
Court was not taking God’s law into account.
Of course, the first thought that always crosses my mind is how can
these people presume to speak for God?
Isn’t that the definition of hubris?
And the second one: don’t these
people know that the Supreme Court is legally required to ignore God, as well
as Buddha and Allah? But as ignorant as
these people are, they’re caught in the same whirlwind as me, and, like me,
they feed it with their emotional responses.

So the
energy keeps moving, keeps circulating. None
of us can hold a line, in the face of such dramatic social forces. As we
look across the circle, at the people on the other side, we see that they are also
rocked. Those faces that seem so
unfamiliar – and sometimes terrifying – are human beings, being summarily shaken
out of their stasis.

As July
begins, Venus is slow-dancing with Jupiter, and you can see this lovely
conjunction in the western sky after sunset.
We also have a full moon on July 1, further encouraging an outpouring of
energy. With this full moon close to the
US’s natal solar position (exact on July 4), this is a chance for everyone to
celebrate their own particular take on this country – what it means, what we
care about, what we need from our communities, where we are going.

July doesn’t
have the fast pace of June. Jupiter moves
quickly away from the trine to Uranus, although Jupiter represents different
things than she did before this aspect happened. The social contract is a different one these
days. Gay men and lesbians have a little
more dignity, a little more visibility - and we are a little more ordinary than we were
before. (Of course, this takes some
getting used to!) There will still be
lots of celebrating all through July, as Jupiter continues in Leo, but there’s
also preparation for a more sedate and sensible approach in August, when Jupiter
will enter Virgo.

Venus is
moving slowly all through the month, because she will go retrograde on July 25,
for about six weeks. During her
retrograde phase, Venus will bring back old friends and lovers, old hobbies and
pleasures, and old creative inspirations.
This gives everybody plenty of time to chew over the changes that we’ve
seen. Options have opened for everyone
in the gay and lesbian community, and that will mean a lot of personal decisions. Rush to the altar? Or wait?
As Venus slows down, there’s time
to consider what it all means on the most intimate level.

So in July,
there will be a certain sense of arrested energy. This also gives us all time to think about
the earth, our home, as the globe heats up.
In mid-July, there are four planets in Cancer, all bringing up security
issues. Mercury and Mars in Cancer will
be opposing Pluto in mid-month, so some deeper concerns will emerge. What makes us safe as a world? Trying to avoid everyone who’s different from
us? Or working together to ensure
drinking water for our grandchildren?
Piling up riches? Or helping each
other stay healthy?

The larger
picture was drawn for us in June, and now it’s time to fill in the
details. How do we take care of
ourselves, each other, and the earth, all at once? We all have different answers to this question,
and sometimes the answers are directly inverse to each other.

Here, in
Oregon, as I watch the waves break on
the shore, I wonder about the profound, subtle changes that cause this constant
motion. One thing is clear though. We all feel it. No matter where we stand, no matter which
coastline we track, the deep water is common to all of us.